Looking for solutions, not rant. How to fix the overcrowded Tapas?

DasIstWunderblyat 2021-02-15 01:55:17 UTC #21

Battle royale it is.
Or a council that will decide your series's fate on Tapas.
I love democracy!

KJWhitten 2021-02-15 02:29:03 UTC #22

Maybe we could make something similar to the comics feed but for novels?

carloswebcomic 2021-02-15 02:51:39 UTC #23

Back in the old days, we used to link to our friends. That's how we got noticed.
I think we should be provided with a space to advertise our friends.

I don't want to be negative, but I doubt Tapas would do much to alleviate the situation as it wouldn't benefit them financially.

danitasibert 2021-02-15 03:48:25 UTC #24

looking on the front page i mainly see Tapas originals or foreign comics to show on their site, i don't really see a spot for like newly added or something for newbie/ hobbyists. i know they have the community spotlight but there still have to be leaps and bound to get on there.

kitkatxk 2021-02-15 05:01:31 UTC #25

I freaking love the badge idea or some sort of coins earned if you read through the story. Wouldn't even have to be a big thing. People want to spend ink. So maybe if they read a whole novel chapter they get like 5 ink or something like that. That way they earned while reading so not only did they get to enjoy something they love. They got a tiny reward to help them purchase something on the site. Then the Badge earned at the end would feel all the more fulfilling knowing you got to earn lots and read something you loved and everyone can see that.

This is a fantastic Idea. FANTASTIC! Just saying.

kitkatxk 2021-02-15 05:15:09 UTC #26

I wish more of the suggestions were aimed at novels. Comics honestly already get such a bigger chance at viewership just by being a comic that people can read in seconds. It's fast food vs a restaurant you have to wait slightly longer for to enjoy it.I mean novels still only take about 5min to read a chapter because they make novel chapters bite sized on here. But honestly, the novel section is a mess. Finding anything is crazy. I can have my novel trending and be like on the trending list on day with like 300 views in a day then the next day it has 400 views but I could scroll through all of the trending and never find it.

Can we please fix the forever scroll on the searching too. It feels daunting and scary. I miss when we could click page one, page two, page three and see lists of pages. Felt a lot less like I could scroll until I create a black hole in the universe kinda thing.

And can we get some way to launch an ad that is clickable over to outside tapas if we have decided to create our own merch since tapas isn't collabing with any merch sites that I know of?

likhoradka 2021-02-15 05:18:27 UTC #27

Yeah, a space to link to friends would be super nice! Or even something like the old school webrings. Like maybe a small space for 3-5 groups you're part of. Having a group cap would help keep it from being too overwhelming for readers and keep authors/artists from getting lost within another overly large group. Maybe even groups that are a mix of comics and books to help expose people even further.

jensrichard77 2021-02-15 05:59:52 UTC #28

Right here. In the frontpage if your series in the dashboard.

thedude3445 2021-02-15 12:52:06 UTC #29

Advanced search options of all kinds, please! The more breadth of search available, the more ability for readers to find the stories they want to read (and then you end up with people like me with libraries of way too many stories, but still).

Steal a page from Royal Road and implement Ongoing, Completed, Hiatus, and Dropped tags for stories! Stories that go X amount of time with no updates are automatically put on Hiatus, and then users can toggle the rest (but can't remove Hiatus manually unless they post a new episode). This plus more search options allows users extremely easily to filter out stories that are canceled if they don't want to see that, or stories that are completed if they are only looking for ongoing work. In my time here, I've stumbled upon several really interesting, awesome-looking comics that just happened to have been dropped 4 years ago, which bummed me out when I started reading and realized that it was probably never gonna be finished. Now, comics actually leave hiatus a LOT more frequently than novels do, so I think auto-Hiatus would need to be something generous, like 3 months or something, but it would help with the perceived overcrowding quite a lot if implemented well.

skicoak 2021-02-15 14:31:21 UTC #30

domisotto 2021-02-15 14:34:21 UTC #31

I gave up hope that they would ever promote completed stories here. Tapas seemed to be enamoured with the never-ending stories model too much.

skicoak 2021-02-15 17:46:33 UTC #32

Okay... This is going to sound a bit radical but bare with me... and maybe some of this is already in the pipeline...

Maybe don't lump all the creators and creative teams together as The Community.

Adopt the sports model and put us into clearly defined tiers. Have your Premier League, then your tier ones...tier twos and so on down to an entrance/beginners league. Remove the sub-based structures and link unlocking events like ink and ad revenue to reaching certain tiers. Subscriptions have nothing to do with how the tiers are chosen,

Tapas would assign the tiers in house. Sure, it would be a large undertaking but the benefits to moving professional level projects to higher tiers immediately and then having others work to move up tiers has psychological merit. It takes us all out of the subtle adversarial relationship we have with readers/fans. You'd automatically have a visible rating of Tapas's expectations of us for their site. We could decide if it was worth the effort to move up/improve in their eyes.

I haven't fully fleshed the idea out yet but it would shake things up at least.

DiegoPalacios 2021-02-15 18:45:55 UTC #33

While your proposal sounds interesting, i think is neccesary to know how these tiers would be measured, because without a proper method, it would only favor friends of the Staff and encourage toxicity between creators if they perceive it as competing with each other.....

kitkatxk 2021-02-15 18:51:39 UTC #34

Thanks I didn't realize you could lead to outside tapas. I thought you were only allowed to link onto Tapas. XD

kitkatxk 2021-02-15 18:52:26 UTC #35

I love that hiatus thing. OMG YAS!

jensrichard77 2021-02-15 19:33:41 UTC #36

Yes @skicoak this is what I see too!
Give us a “local stage” and let us work up from there.
I too had this tire idea, but had no idea of how it could work. But it will help us all.
It is so frustrated to meet all the new creators coming here and have no guiding of reality.
Just like me when I started. Get 100 subs and get rich.
Ya right! That just makes everyone sub for sub and cry that no one is reading.

This “tire” thing can break the bad wheel of us circling in the same mess.

And somehow... Maybe this is what Tapastry will be, when community series can be monitored.

Who knows? But this sounds like a right direction

skicoak 2021-02-15 19:34:13 UTC #37

Well that's the thing...all that toxicity and competition for Tapas resources already exists. But currently Tapas isn't exactly willing to assume a wholesale responsibility for the decisions being made. I'm sure you've seen the typical discussions about BL dominance on the front page etc...those conversations usually steer to it being a fan driven phenomenon, which sort of short sells Tapas's roll in deciding what to push and what marinates.

But if Tapas openly tiers everyone...we all know exactly what they want in a series. Maybe they put things like Scurry or Errant immediately in tier one and validate that web series of professional quality that don't meet the dominant genre are valued. They're meant to be nurtured and let the audience grow to high expectations...even if it's slower.
Or you could end up in a lower tier, realize Tapas doesn't see a lot of potential in your project and with that CLEAR set of information decide your course of action. Do you try to tailor the project to move up? Just accept it and utilize the hosting or move on to another platform.

CytricAcid 2021-02-15 20:00:29 UTC #38

i wholeheartedly disagree. a comic hosting platform shouldnt be tiering and passing judgement on content created on their platform. all this will do is direct hate towards higher rated comics and lead to even MORE of an us vs them situation. besides, i did not come on tapas to get my content judged by the site. this is a site to host my comic, nothing more. we can uplift the community without creating worse cliques and classes.
this will most likely discourage "lower tier" artists from working as well if they are told they're low quality by the site themselves. no one is motivated by being told their work is bad, especially by your own hosting website.

nathanKmcwilliams 2021-02-15 20:14:25 UTC #39

See...I really like this. Because in my mind, low competition like this breeds excellence. It brings out those who are truly hungry for success.

Perhaps one way to bring bolster the tiers and encourage rising up through the ranks, could be contests. This is how Artstreet/Medibang works. (Kind of) Win a contest, place in a contest, these could be ways to rise higher. One with a higher boost than the other of course.

skicoak 2021-02-15 20:23:44 UTC #40

I appreciate you having an opposite opinion about the idea but I think you saying the hosting platform isn't already passing judgment on our content and distributing their resources on that judgment is short sighted.

It's just hidden under a crispy layer of algorithms right now.

We could easily work an option for a creator to opt into a non-tiered category... To just utilize the hosting.

But if we as creators don't know where we stand in the corporate strategy, then we're just blindly hoping for the resources to find us.

Edit: Not tossing boulders here but Tapas is currently running a contest to win a Staff pick spot ...by having the best emoji pitch. I mean it's a fun community idea but...hmmmmm.